


the snail will get to easter just as soon

by speedboat



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Homophobia, Other, Self-Discovery, coach bittle defense squad, fathers and sons, figure skating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-13 18:19:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4532370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speedboat/pseuds/speedboat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>5 scenes from Eric Bittle's adolescence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the snail will get to easter just as soon

**Author's Note:**

> the working title for this story was 'eric bittle's tragic superhero backstory.'  
> oh, bitty.

i.

Eric is fifteen the first time he hears it directed at him. Maybe that's far overdue or something, given that he comes from a part of Georgia that becomes a ghost town every Sunday, where the grocery store down the street took People off the racks the week Adam Lambert came out. But he's just getting off the ice after finally mastering that toe jump into Single Axel he's been working on for weeks, when he accidentally trips one of the older hockey players who has the ice after him.

"Watch your back, fag!" the older kid yells at him, and Eric doesn't know what it means, but he can hear it isn't good. He flushes bright red, and hauls ass back to the locker room, where he's indignant and embarrassed in waves as he undresses. He looks it up when he gets home, and when he sees what he gets from the search engine, he immediately deletes the history off the family computer and goes to, like, read a book, to cleanse himself in some way.

It makes him mad, but it also makes him afraid that other people can see right through him, to what he's tried so hard to push down— the daydreams about the players his dad has over for dinner sometimes, and the absentminded erections he's had from them. The figure skating.

He turns the pages of A Wrinkle in Time, pretending to be reading when his father gets home from work that night after practice. He asks without any real interest how figure skating was, still stumbling a little over figure skating. Eric hadn't ever really thought about why his dad has such a problem with figure skating before, but with this new background knowledge, he realizes that his father has most likely correlated it with the word the hockey player at the rink used, and he feels fresh shame at the idea that Coach might already suspect.

Again, it probably shouldn't have taken him so long to figure that out, but Eric's eyes well immediately with tears as he chokes out, "It was fine," and asks to be excused. His dad wishes he were different, he thinks. Or, his dad wishes he weren't quite so different.

 

ii.

That's the beginning of the end, in a lot of ways. In the summer after sophomore year, Eric makes it all the way to Junior Regionals. Junior Regionals, Katya, their coach, has explained, is the gateway to the Junior Olympics, which is a springboard to the real Olympics. She has high hopes for him and Allison, his partner, and the summer before Junior Regionals has some of the best memories of Eric's life. They cross-train in the mornings before skating, and then they skate for two hours, going over Double Axel Lutz until they can hardly walk. There's more skating in the evening, along with a strict ban on sugar and butter for Eric, but he can deal with that. He's so happy and proud and ready for Junior Regionals.

They announce it over the loudspeaker at school, and Eric blushes and puts his head down, but he's pleased, a little, that they thought to do it.

The day comes, and Eric eats three bowls of oatmeal to carbo-load. They drive together in a minivan, Katya, his mom, Allison's mother and father, and Coach, who objects good-naturedly to the Top 40 blasting from the car as they head down the Interstate towards Atlanta. They're both nervous and excited, legs jiggling from the backseat. They sign in, and get their assigned time slot, fourth out of twelve.

 

They warm up, practice the modified toe jump Allison has trouble on and Eric's damn Double Axel Lutz, and then their names are being called. This is the most adrenaline Eric has ever had in his body, and he scans the crowd for his parents.

His eyes instead catch four very familiar faces, and his heart sinks as he realizes who they are. Chris Beverett from the soccer team, and his three goon friends. They see him and bang on the glass.

"You got thith, Eric!" Chris shrieks with a lisp, and Eric just kind of stares straight ahead, a step behind. This cannot be happening. These bullies from school cannot actually be here, in Atlanta, heckling him during arguably the most important day of his life. And yet, he knows they are, knows they probably drove here and have been laughing about this all week.

"Let's go, Bittle!" Jeff Dunagan mocks. "You can do it! Put a little muscle to it!"

The music starts, and Eric suddenly can't remember any of the routine, can't think about anything except that he used to be friends with Jeff Dunagan, all the way through the eighth grade.

Allison is staring at him in concern. He looks back at her, and she mouths, attitude into arabesque. He nods, and strikes his starting pose. He can see Chris Beverett and Co. behind the glass, and as the music starts, he begins to skate, gaining momentum for that first attitude. He makes it, miraculously, and starts for an arabesque, and he…falls.

Any semblance of sanity he thought he'd be able to maintain absolutely falls to pieces.

He misses his Lutz from the Axel, and nearly paralyzes Al. She gets up, hesitantly, and continues their routine, but Eric can barely see her through the tears in his eyes. He drops her on their final loop around the ice, and she has to lead him to their final bow. They finish their routine to tepid applause, amidst the jeers from the guys. The calls echo in the rink, and Eric almost throws up when he realizes that if he can hear them, so can the entire stadium. So can his father.

Allison casts him a sidelong look, when they finally get to skate back to the sidelines. He doesn't say anything, knowing he just cost them any chance they had at a spot at the Junior Olympics.

"Those guys were fucking assholes," she says, her voice thick, and she reaches out to grab his hand. "What complete morons."

"They were from school," Eric says quietly. "I'm never ever going to hear the end of this."

Allison's homeschooled, and it shows when she says, "Just ignore them."

He gives a hollow laugh, his nose all stuffy. "That's not how it works."

 

"Oh, Dicky," his mom says softly, when they come in eighth in their age division. He doesn't look at anyone, at Allison or her parents or his parents. Especially not Coach, who's probably embarrassed for people to see that Eric's his son.

The ride back is silent.

"Ve are practicing already for next year," Katya says to him when they drop her off at her house. "I don't blame you at all, Ereek," she adds, lowering her voice and reaching to brush the hair away from his eyes. "You performed so well, and you worked even harder than you needed to this summer. I am so proud of you."

 

iii.

Eric doesn't go to school for two days, hiding in his room with Señor Bunny and his laptop. His mother brings him soup, and, mercifully, doesn't mention Regionals once. After two days, though, Eric realizes that he probably needs to at least get his homework, if he wants to get into any college other than Georgia Tech. He goes back to school and he stares at the walls and eats in the library and nobody talks to him.

It isn't that unusual; he didn't really have many friends before, but it hurts deeper now than it used to. He'd always considered himself just an outsider that no one really paid attention to, other than the football team with the supply closet that one time, but it's different now. The dam is broken. They plant love letters in his locker, covered in glitter that won’t come out of his coat no matter how hard he wipes at it. They make kissing noises when Eric tries to compare answers with a guy in his Algebra 2 class. He goes straight home on the bus after school gets out instead of waiting for Coach in the bleachers. It’s better not to risk getting beat up while school’s out, and it means Eric can shut himself up in the kitchen and bake for hours, dozens of pies he’d avoided baking to seem more straight. He just doesn’t care enough to hide right now.

 

iv.

Quitting figure skating is a natural next step in Eric Bittle's Withdraw From the World plan. His mother cries when he tells her, and almost starts to tell him not to let Chris Beverett get in his head, a blacklisted subject around the house, before he cuts her off. Even Coach looks concerned.

"Eric, are you sure?" he asks, even though he'd probably  it if Eric stopped. "I know how much you love skating…"

"I'm sure," Eric says, and his mother wipes her eyes.

 

Katya is appalled.

"You cannot just quit," Katya says, staring at him as if he's grown another head. He came to tell her at the rink, and is now regretting it, as her voice gets louder and louder. "Your talent is some of the best I have ever seen at this rink. You could go places with this, Eric, and so could Allison."

"I can't do it anymore, Katya, I'm sorry." He doesn't look at her, his eyes welling up in this tiny rink where he grew up. He's been skating with her since he was five years old.

"If this is about money," she tells him, accent thickening, "I will coach for free. You can do work study, learn the Zamboni—"

"—It's not money," he says, and the look she gives him, like her heart is breaking, makes him really start to cry. "I'm s-sorry, I just c-can't do this anymore."

"You want to."

"It's not about that anymore," Eric tries to explain, once he stops crying so heavily. "I'm tired of being different."

Katya frowns. "Different?"

"I get picked on," he says quietly. "For doing this."

"What, those boys at the competition?"

"I don't know," he says. "I just want to fit in for once."

"Fitting in is not what makes a champion, Eric," she says. "Being different is a quality that people value in the real world."

"I know, and I'm sorry—"

"But you are not in the real world. You are in high school. I know that being different can make you a target. I understand that better than anyone."

His eyes flicker to the scar above her eyebrow that she once told him was a product of being Jewish in Soviet Russia.

"Exactly," she says. "If you want to quit, there is nothing I can do. I understand why you would want to. But you will always have a home in this rink."

He nods, jerkily, and she pulls him to her, suddenly, which is rare for Katya.

“You are a wonderful young man,” she says, and he wishes he believed her.

 

v.

One week in November, he doesn’t sleep for two nights and he has glitter in his hair that some guy on the hockey team threw at him. He can’t comb it out. He bakes pie after pie after pie, and Coach comes downstairs to the kitchen at two in the morning to him hyperventilating, hunched over his latest batch of mini-quiches on the counter.

“Eric,” says Coach, soft and concerned. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m not--” he takes a shaky breath in. “I’m okay.”

“Eric.”

“I’m fine,” Eric gasps. “Go back to bed.”

Coach steps across the threshold of the kitchen, and Eric stares as he steps closer to him, like he’s an animal that’s going to startle or something. Eric feels one of Coach’s arms wind around his shoulders. He makes to shrink away, but Coach boxes him in, leaves him no choice but to accept the hug.

Eric hasn’t hugged his father in two years, but it’s not something you forget how to do, and they stay like that, for a minute and a half, together, while Eric’s breathing slows. The tightness around his chest eases up, and when Coach lets him go, he deflates instantly, exhausted and sad and angry. He’s breathing normally, though.

Eric lets his father lead him upstairs while he tells Coach to refrigerate the quiches so they don’t spoil. He collapses into bed, and Coach pulls the comforter over him.

“I’m sorry,” says Eric softly, his puffy eyes blinking up at his father.

“No, Eric,” says Coach, and brushes his hair back from his eyes. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I am something wrong,” Eric whispers as Coach turns his back. Coach doesn’t say anything as he exits Eric’s room and closes the door behind him. Eric isn’t even sure if he heard him.

vi.

Eric's father starts looking for a new job. He doesn't say it's for Eric, but he also doesn't give a reason why he's started making Chris Beverett do extra laps on the field after practice. A coaching position opens up in Madison soon afterwards, and Eric packs up with relish, ready for a fresh start. They'll leave the last day of school before winter break. Word kind of spread that the football coach was leaving, and so some people say goodbye to Eric, and lie and say they'll miss him. It's nice, he supposes.

Jeff Dunagan comes up to him after school on the last day before winter break, glancing furtively around before saying, "Hey, what Chris did wasn't cool."

"Which time?" Eric asks dully, inspecting his nails as he waits for his mother to pick him up.

"At your, uh, skating thing."

"You were there, too," Eric says.

"Uh, I know. I didn't really think about how that'd make you, like, feel."

"Really?" Eric asks, suddenly incredulous. He surprises himself by looking Jeff in the eye. "You didn't think about that? Wasn't that the whole point? Make the gay kid feel like shit?"

He realizes what he's said, that this is the first time he's ever come out to anyone, and it's to Jeff Dunagan, asshole.

Jeff had clearly thought he'd be able to wipe his conscience clean, that Eric would say _thank you so much, Jeff, "What Chris did wasn't cool" is the most heartfelt thing anyone has ever said to me_

"I didn't mean to—"

Eric steps markedly away from him, then. “You knew exactly what you meant to do.”

“Eric--”

“I don’t forgive you,” says Eric. “I don’t care what you do from now on, but you’ll have to live with that for the rest of your life.”

His mother pulls up to the school then, and Eric doesn’t look back at Jeff or the high school or at anything, really.

He's moving forward, now, and it isn't fair or fun, but it's happening. 

He might as well stay on for the ride.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> "Versus Wayne Gretsky's formulation.  
> When I think of my death, I think of returning  
> the chemicals and microorganisms I borrowed...  
> ...The past is skating to where the puck will be."  
> -Robert Ronnow, 'the snail will get to easter just as soon'


End file.
